North Carolina Tar Heels vs Virginia Tech Hokies Basketball Recap

North Carolina 64, Virginia Tech 61

The Virginia Tech Hokies were wounded enough as it was when they traveled to the Dean Dome to play the North Carolina Tar Heels in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They’re now going to be far more hurt by the game they just gave away on an agonizing evening on Tobacco Road.

Thursday night’s contest started in such a distinctly promising manner for Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg. The Hokies have been hobbled by season-ending injuries to four players, forcing Greenberg to suit up walk-ons to field a full practice squad. Only eight players were available for the game in Chapel Hill. Yet, none of that seemed to matter as his club took a 31-15 first-half lead and appeared to be on the verge of a blowout in unfriendly territory. Suddenly, Tech’s hopes for moving back up the ACC ladder seemed entirely legitimate once again. Instead, the boys from Blacksburg, Virginia, received a major psychological wound on top of all the physical bumps and bruises they’ve sustained in the first two months of their Murphy’s Law kind of a season.

Here are the grueling details for Tech fans: North Carolina started the game slowly, committing five turnovers in the first five minutes before coach Roy Williams replaced his five starters, trailing 12-2. Malcolm Delaney hit his first four 3-point attempts for the Hokies, sending Virginia Tech to that big 16-point lead with just over six minutes left in the first half. With neither team scoring for roughly two minutes, the Hokie advantage remained at 16 with 4:19 remaining in the first half. With Williams’s starting five back in the lineup, UNC stemmed the turnover trend, however, and began the climb back to contention. The Tar Heels, applying game pressure to Virginia Tech and making the Hokies think about all their blown opportunities over the past three seasons under Greenberg, took a 9-0 run to the locker room with the Hokies leading 31-24. Virginia Tech did own a seven-point advantage at the break, but for a program that has made a habit out of playing just well enough to lose – and miss the NCAA Tournament – over the past three years, the Carolina run planted seeds of doubt that grew into poison ivy in the second half.

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Forget all the good things Tech did in the first half. Forget the fact that Delaney led all scorers with 15 points (hitting 5-of-7 3-pointers) for Virginia Tech. Forget the fact that UNC freshman forward Harrison Barnes had only two points and four turnovers. Forget the fact that Carolina struggled from the foul line, scoring on only 3 of 11 attempts. In the second half, doubt grew into panic, and the Hokies blew yet another game they needed to win.

Virginia Tech found foul problems early in the second half, with Delaney picking up his third, and Terrell Bell picking up his third and fourth infractions in the first five minutes. Yet, for all that, the Hokies still held a small lead. Hokie guard Erick Green (10 points in the game) went to the bench with leg cramps shortly thereafter, and UNC took its first lead since the game’s early stages (43-42) with 9:37 remaining. The contest remained close, and wasn’t decided until Kendall Marshall landed two free throws for North Carolina in the final seconds to make the final margin 64-61. The deciding factor in this game was that Delaney, Tech’s best player, hoisted a bad three-point shot with the Hokies trailing 62-61 in the final seconds. Delaney, instead of getting to the rim in a one-point game and forcing Carolina’s defense to avoid fouling him, settled for the long ball his team didn’t need with seven seconds left on the clock. The Tar Heels snagged the rebound of Delaney’s miss, and Marshall did his thing at the line to seal the deal with 2.2 seconds on the clock.

The Tar Heels were led by John Henson with 17 points and eight rebounds, followed by Zeller’s 16 points and nine rebounds. Barnes found his stride late in the game, finishing with 12 points and five rebounds.

Virginia Tech struggled to keep five players on the court, filling eight minutes with seldom-used scrub Tyrone Garland. Delaney led all scorers with 28 points in 39 minutes of game time. Greenberg has a difficult road ahead of him with players to fill the minutes of play ahead, but the even bigger source of agony was that his limited team established dominance, only to fritter it away as Delaney, his meal-ticket scorer, failed so abjectly in the clutch.

By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer